Bo Bichette Placed On Injured List Due To Fractured Finger
The Blue Jays announced Thursday that shortstop Bo Bichette suffered a fractured middle finger and has been placed on the 10-day injured list, ending his 2024 season. Bichette was scratched from yesterday’s lineup after suffering a hand injury during pregame fielding drills. Outfielder Jonatan Clase has been recalled from Triple-A Buffalo to take Bichette’s spot on the active roster.
The broken finger caps off a nightmare season for Bichette — one that’s seen the two-time All-Star weather a pair of IL stints due to calf strains that have severely hobbled him. Bichette only just returned from the injured list Tuesday and played in one game after a nearly two-month absence due to that ailing calf. He’ll close out the year with a wildly uncharacteristic .225/.277/.322 batting line and four homers — a far cry from the .299/.340/.487 batting line he carried into the 2024 campaign.
Bichette was the subject of trade rumblings early this summer, but Toronto GM Ross Atkins quickly shut down any real notion of selling low on his star shortstop when he said in mid-June that trading Bichette (or teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) “[didn’t] make any sense” for the Jays. While the Blue Jays ultimately operated as deadline sellers, they mostly moved players who’d have been up for free agency at the end of the current season.
All indications have been that Atkins & Co. want to retool the roster and take aim at a return to contending next season. Bichette, who recently voiced a strong desire to stay with the Jays, will presumably be a part of those efforts — although other teams around the league will likely at least inquire about the possibility of prying him loose from the only organization he’s known to this point in his career.
The 2025 season will be Bichette’s final year before reaching free agency for the first time. The Jays signed him to a three-year, $33.6MM deal buying out all three of his arbitration seasons back in February of 2023. That contract, which did not delay his path to the open market, calls for Bichette to earn $16.5MM next season in what will be his age-27 campaign.
Blue Jays Notes: Wagner, Bichette
The Blue Jays placed Will Wagner on the 60-day injured list yesterday, bringing his rookie season to an early close. Keegan Matheson of MLB.com tweets that the infielder will undergo a left knee scope tomorrow. It’s a minor arthroscopic procedure that is expected to prevent Wagner from participating in baseball activities for a month. He should have ample time to progress through most of the offseason and be ready for Spring Training.
Toronto acquired Wagner alongside Jake Bloss and Joey Loperfido in a strong trade package for rental starter Yusei Kikuchi. Wagner was in Triple-A with the Astros at the time of the trade. The Jays briefly sent him to their top affiliate before calling him up in mid-August. The lefty-hitting second baseman made a strong first impression, running a .305/.337/.451 slash with a pair of homers in 24 games.
Wagner had a very strong year in Triple-A to earn the MLB look. He combined for a .315/.432/.444 line through 355 minor league plate appearances. Wagner drew 59 walks while striking out just 37 times. Assuming the surgery rehab goes as planned, he could compete for the second base job in camp. Davis Schneider, Leo Jiménez and Ernie Clement should split the remaining time there this season.
On the other side of the infield, the Jays scratched Bo Bichette minutes before Wednesday’s loss to the Rangers. The shortstop suffered a contusion on his right middle finger. Manager John Schneider said after the game that Bichette was injured while taking grounders in pregame warm-ups (link via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet). He’ll go for x-rays tomorrow.
Bichette just returned from the injured list on Tuesday. A calf strain had sidelined him since the middle of July. That was the second calf-related IL stint of what has been an extremely frustrating season. If he did suffer any kind of finger fracture, the Jays would presumably shut him down for the year. Bichette has appeared in 81 games and owns a career-worst .225/.277/.322 batting line.
Daulton Varsho To Undergo Shoulder Surgery
Daulton Varsho will undergo surgery to repair a rotator cuff injury in his right shoulder, he tells Hazel Mae (X link). Toronto manager John Schneider told the Toronto beat (relayed on X by Keegan Matheson of MLB.com) that the Jays will have a clearer timeline once Varsho completes the procedure. Schneier didn’t rule out the possibility that the rehab process carries into next year’s Spring Training.
That brings an early end to the outfielder’s second year in Toronto. Varsho hit .214/.293/.407 with 18 homers, 21 doubles and seven triples through 513 plate appearances. That’s league average offensive production, by measure of wRC+, with Varsho’s power helping to offset the poor on-base mark. It’s a better year than he had in 2023, when he hit .220/.285/.389 despite offense being higher around the league than it has been this season.
Varsho may not recapture the 27-homer form that he showed during his final season with the Diamondbacks. He can still be a very productive player even with league average offense. The former catcher has developed into one of the game’s premier defensive outfielders. Varsho had fantastic marks for his 672 innings of center field work and his 400+ frames in left field. Statcast has him tied for second among outfielders (behind Washington’s Jacob Young) in Outs Above Average. Defensive Runs Saved credited Varsho with an incredible 28 runs above average — not only the best in MLB but five runs clear of second-place Jarren Duran.
Those defensive metrics should earn Varsho his first Gold Glove. He’ll go into next season as Toronto’s everyday center fielder if he’s healthy. Any kind of offseason setback could put that in doubt, but for now, there’s no indication the Jays will need to look outside the organization for center field help.
Nathan Lukes, who has taken over in center, looks like a solid fourth outfielder. He’d be an option to pick up some early-season starts if Varsho falls behind schedule. George Springer has plenty of center field experience but he has only played one game there this season. As he enters his age-35 season, Springer seems firmly committed to right field.
Varsho is under team control for another two seasons. He made $5.65MM in his second of four years of arbitration. He’ll likely land somewhere in the $8-10MM range next year.
Blue Jays Claim Nick Robertson
4:10pm: The Jays have now made it official, announcing that they have claimed Robertson and optioned him to Triple-A Buffalo. Infielder Will Wagner was placed on the 60-day injured list with left knee inflammation to open a 40-man roster spot. That also created an active roster spot for shortstop Bo Bichette, who has been reinstated from the 10-day IL, as expected. The Jays also placed outfielder Daulton Varsho on the 10-day IL with a right shoulder strain, retroactive to September 14, and recalled Steward Berroa in a corresponding move.
2:00pm: The Blue Jays have claimed right-hander Nick Robertson off waivers from the Angels, reports MLBTR’s Steve Adams on X. The Halos had designated him for assignment a couple of days ago. The Jays have a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move to make the claim official.
Robertson, 26, has a bit of major league experience with poor baseline results though more encouraging peripherals. He has pitched for the Dodgers, Red Sox and Cardinals over the past two seasons, with a 5.45 earned run average in 34 2/3 innings. His .386 batting average on balls in play and 65.1% strand rate are both on the unlucky side, while his 25.3% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate are both solid figures. His 4.12 FIP and 3.49 SIERA suggest he may be capable of posting better results than he has managed so far.
It’s a somewhat similar story in the minor leagues. From 2021 to the present, he has tossed 203 innings on the farm with a 4.39 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate, 9.5% walk rate, .326 BABIP, 66.6% strand rate and 4.01 FIP.
Despite the runs crossing the board, teams have clearly been intrigued by the encouraging strikeout to walk ratios. The Red Sox acquired him from the Dodgers in last summer’s trade that sent Enrique Hernández to Los Angeles. Just a few months later, the Cardinals acquired him from the Sox as part of the December 2023 deal that sent Tyler O’Neill to Boston.
Robertson only got limited big league action with the Cards this year, tossing 12 1/3 innings. He struck out 26.9% of batters faced and only walked 3.8% of them, but gave up three homers in that limited time. That and a .364 BABIP led to an 85.9% strand rate and 4.38 ERA in that time. In the minors, he tossed 21 2/3 innings but had control problems, an oddity for him, posting an uncharacteristic 15.7% walk rate.
The Cards put him on waivers just over a month ago, with the Angels putting in a claim. He was sent to Triple-A Salt Lake and tossed 13 innings there, striking out 25.8% of batters faced with a 12.1% walk rate, improved control from his previous Triple-A stint but still a bit worse than average. A .438 BABIP and 58.6% strand rate were once again culprits in a small sample, leading to a 6.92 ERA but 4.30 FIP. The Angels put him back on waivers just over a month after claiming him with the Jays now swooping in, bringing Robertson to the same city as his hockey namesake.
Perhaps the Jays feel the results will even out in time or maybe they have a plan to limit the damage that hitters are doing against Robertson. They don’t need to commit a major league roster spot to him, as he will still have another option season remaining after this one. For now, they can get a close-up look at him and see if they can find a way to translate those strong peripherals into better results. If things work out, he has less than a year of service time and can be cheaply retained well into the future.
The Toronto bullpen was undone by injuries and underperformance earlier in the year, with the club then subtracting from the group by trading Yimi García, Trevor Richards and Nate Pearson prior to the deadline. To compensate for the many absences from trades and injuries, they have been taking fliers on all sorts of relievers, having acquired Ryan Burr, Tommy Nance, José Cuas, Joel Kuhnel, Luis Frías, Yerry Rodríguez, Easton Lucas, Dillon Tate, Emmanuel Ramírez, Brett de Geus and now Robertson in waiver claims or small trades. Some of those guys have since lost their roster spots but the club is clearly willing to turn over any stone as they attempt to find paydirt.
Blue Jays Outright Yerry Rodriguez
Right-hander Yerry Rodriguez went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment by the Blue Jays and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Buffalo, per the team’s transaction log at MLB.com.
Rodriguez, 26, only saw a brief look in Toronto and struggled considerably in that time. The hard-throwing righty was tagged for nine runs (eight of them earned) on 10 hits and two walks with five strikeouts in 4 2/3 frames. He posted a 6.88 ERA in 17 innings with the Rangers prior to being acquired in a June trade that sent minor league righty Josh Mollerus to Texas. (Rodriguez had been designated for assignment in Texas as well, prior to that swap.)
This is the third season in which Rodriguez has logged at least some time in the majors, but he’s yet to find any success. He’s pitched 36 1/3 innings at the game’s top level and been torched for an 8.17 ERA. Rodriguez averages better than 96 mph on his heater and has shown a repeated ability to miss bats in the upper minors, but his bottom-line results have been suspect even at the Triple-A level. In parts of four seasons there, he’s totaled 156 innings with a 5.31 ERA, 28.3% strikeout rate and 12.4% walk rate.
Rodriguez doesn’t have the major league service time or prior outright required to become a free agent immediately, but he can become a minor league free agent at season’s end.
Blue Jays Claim Tyler Heineman, Designate Brian Serven
The Blue Jays announced that they have claimed catcher Tyler Heineman off waivers from the Red Sox. Boston had designated him for assignment a few days ago. Catcher Brian Serven has been designated for assignment by the Jays in a corresponding move.
Heineman, 33, clearly has some fans in the Toronto front office as this is his third stint with the club. He signed a minor league deal with the Jays going into 2022 and added to the club’s roster early that year, though he went to the Pirates on waivers in May of that season. In April of 2023, the Bucs designated Heineman for assignment and flipped him to the Jays for utility player Vinny Capra. That stint lasted until December of last year, when the Jays put him on waivers and lost him to the Mets.
The Mets later designated Heineman for assignment in January and flipped him to the Red Sox for cash. Heineman has served as an up-and-down depth catcher for the Sox this year, but perhaps became expendable by Boston acquiring Danny Jansen to bolster their catching depth, the same deal that opened some playing time behind the plate in Toronto.
Heineman has bounced around quite a bit in his career, never securing more than part-time work. He has appeared in five big league seasons but has just 286 plate appearances in 106 games over those. He has a combined batting line of .216/.297/.280 for a wRC+ of 66.
That’s not amazing production but his defense tends to be strong. Each of Statcast and Baseball Prospectus have given him positive grades for his framing, blocking and throwing. FanGraphs also grades him as a plus framer and lists a tally of six Defensive Runs Saved in his career.
It’s also possible that there’s a bit more in his bat, based on his numbers on the farm. From 2019 to the present, he’s hit .279/.372/.432 in the minors for a 107 wRC+, walking 11.3% of the time and striking out in just 17% of his plate appearances. That includes 51 games for Triple-A Worcester this year with Heineman posting a 14.1% walk rate, 16.1% strikeout rate, .252/.379/.403 batting line and 111 wRC+.
Perhaps the Jays see a path to Heineman providing plus defense and at least some adequate offense in the majors. He will finish this season with less than three years of service time, meaning the Jays can theoretically control him for four more years if he carves out a role as backup to Alejandro Kirk. However, Heineman will be out of options next year and will therefore be harder to keep on the roster.
To make room for Heineman, the Jays are risking losing Serven. He has appeared in 28 games for the Jays this year, mostly after the aforementioned Jansen trade opened up playing time alongside Kirk. Serven’s defensive metrics are roughly league average for the most part, but he has struck out in 31% of his plate appearances, leading to a line of .159/.243/.222 and a 38 wRC+. When combined with his earlier time with the Rockies, he has now slashed .187/.247/.293 in 299 big league plate appearances for a 43 wRC+.
The Jays will put him on waivers in the coming days. It’s possible he could attract interest based on his minor league numbers. He has hit .243/.325/.435 for an 87 wRC+ dating back to 2021. That includes a .265/.390/.379 line and 111 wRC+ in 40 Triple-A games this year. He still has one option season remaining after this one and less than two years of service time.
Nori Aoki To Retire At NPB Season’s End
Former big league outfielder and current member of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yakult Swallows Nori Aoki is set to retire following the 2024 campaign, per an announcement from the Swallows yesterday (hat tip to The Yomiuri Shimbun). Aoki, 42, spent parts of six seasons in the majors in addition to a lengthy career in Japan.
Aoki’s career first began with the Swallows back in 2004 when he debuted at the age of 22. He made it into just ten games with Yakult that year, going 3-for-15 at the plate with a walk, a stolen base, and six strikeouts. That tiny sample size did nothing to suggest what Aoki would go on to do in his first full season with the club, however, as he slashed an excellent .344/.387/.417 in 144 games during the 2005 season, becoming just the second player in NPB history (after Ichiro Suzuki) to collect 200 hits in a single season.
He improved to even greater heights throughout his mid-20s, slashing 15-to-20 homer power to go along with fantastic contact and baserunning skills. As his plate discpline developed, he even began to walk more than he struck out, leading to a dominant stretch of seasons from 2007 to 2010 where he walked at a 10.6% clip against a minuscule 9.8% strikeout rate in addition to his aforementioned solid power and impressive base-stealing abilities, and even crossed the 200-hit barrier for a second time in 2010 to become the only NPB player in history to achieve the feat twice.
Given the excellence he had demonstrated throughout his time with the Swallows, it was hardly a surprise when he was quickly snapped up by the Brewers on a two-year deal after being posted for major league clubs prior to the 2012 season. In Milwaukee, Aoki was a slightly above average hitter with a solid .287/.355/.399 slash line. While he only hit a combined 18 home runs over his two seasons with the Brewers, he swiped 50 bags while hitting 57 doubles and 7 triples in that same period. That was a strong enough performance for Milwaukee brass to pick up Aoki’s club option for the 2014 season, but he did not last the offseason with the club and was swapped to the Royals in a deal that brought lefty Will Smith to the Brewers.
After departing the Brewers, Aoki wouldn’t stick around with an MLB club for more than a season at the time for the rest of his time in stateside ball. After acting as the regular right fielder in Kansas City for the club’s AL pennant-winning 2014 season, Aoki departed in free agency to sign with the Giants but was limited to just 93 games when he suffered a broken leg and a concussion in two separate hit-by-pitch incidents. Aoki then signed a one-year deal with the Mariners in 2016 but began to show some signs of decline, notably stealing only seven bases in sixteen attempts with the worst strikeout and walk numbers of his MLB career, though he did display his best power numbers since his rookie 2012 campaign with the Brewers.
Aoki’s final season in the big leagues came back in 2017 and saw him change uniforms several times. The veteran outfielder was claimed off waivers from the Mariners by the Astros during the 2016-17 offseason. Aoki struggled somewhat through 70 games with Houston, however, and ended up traded to the Blue Jays at the deadline that year alongside Teoscar Hernandez in a deal that brought Francisco Liriano to Houston. Aoki managed to catch fire down the stretch, however, and while his playing time was further split between the Blue Jays and Mets over the final two months of the season he slashed .281/.294/.594 for Toronto in August before slashing .284/.371/.373 in Queens that September.
Following the end of his MLB career, Aoki returned home to the Swallows and has played for the club in each of the past seven seasons. Now 42, the veteran is the league’s oldest active player and has collected more than 7,000 plate appearances with a .313/.392/.445 slash line in 1,713 NPB games. Between NPB and MLB play, Aoki has stepped up to the plate more than 10,000 times with 2,765 hits, 470 doubles, 51 triples, 179 homers and 279 stolen bases. We at MLBTR congratulate Aoki on a fine career and wish him all the best in his post-playing pursuits.
Blue Jays Claim Brett De Geus, Designate Yerry Rodriguez
The Blue Jays have claimed righty Brett de Geus off waivers from the Marlins and designated fellow right-hander Yerry Rodriguez for assignment in a corresponding move, the team announced Thursday. De Geus has been optioned to Triple-A. Miami had designated him for assignment earlier this week.
De Geus, 26, only pitched 5 2/3 innings for the Marlins. He surrendered four runs on seven hits and two walks with four punchouts during that brief look. They’re the second team of the year for the former Rule 5 pick, as he also pitched 3 1/3 innings of one-run ball with Seattle. He’s previously pitched with both the Rangers and Diamondbacks but sports an ugly 7.17 ERA in 59 major league frames. De Geus has fanned a well below-average 16.9% of his opponents in the majors against a 9.7% walk rate that’s about one percentage point higher than the average reliever.
Though he hasn’t had success in the majors or in Triple-A (7.09 ERA in 47 innings), de Geus has gotten looks from several clubs over the years. Teams clearly like his raw stuff. He sits 96.4 mph with his sinker, per Statcast, and regularly posts huge ground-ball rates because of that power offering and its movement. That sinker has still generally been hit fairly hard, but he has more intriguing swing data against his slate of secondary offerings: a cutter, knuckle curve and seldom-used splitter. For now, he’ll add a fresh arm to a Blue Jays bullpen that has been a major weakness this season.
As for the 26-year-old Rodriguez, he’ll now head to waivers. As with de Geus in Miami, he saw only a brief look with the Jays — and it didn’t go well. In 4 2/3 innings for Toronto, Rodriguez was torched for nine runs (eight earned) on 10 hits and a pair of walks. He punched out five of the 27 batters he faced (18.5%).
The Jays acquired Rodriguez from the Rangers in exchange for minor league righty Josh Mollerus earlier this summer after Rodriguez had been designated by Texas. The hard-throwing righty missed nearly a month of action in Triple-A on the injured list following the trade, and in five healthy innings there he’s walked nine batters. Rodriguez’s high-end velocity could hold appeal to another club, but he’s had a rough year both in Triple-A and the big leagues — his third season with some major league time. Overall, Rodriguez owns an 8.17 ERA in 36 1/3 MLB frames.
Phillies Outright Nick Nelson
September 11: Philadelphia announced this evening that Nelson again cleared waivers and was outrighted back to Lehigh Valley. There’s no indication that he’ll elect free agency, though he’ll be a minor league free agent at the end of the year unless the Phils call him back up.
September 7: The Phillies announced a quartet of roster moves in advance of their game with the Marlins, as catcher Aramis Garcia is joining the big league roster after his contract was selected from Triple-A Lehigh Valley. Right-hander Jose Cuas is also joining the organization on a waiver claim from the Blue Jays and has been assigned to Triple-A. In corresponding moves, Philadelphia designated right-hander Nick Nelson for assignment and placed infielder Rodolfo Castro on the 60-day injured list. Castro was first called up from Triple-A before the IL placement, and it was already known that his season would be over after he tore a thumb ligament at the end of August.
Garcia is back in the Show to give the Phillies some extra catching depth since J.T. Realmuto is a little banged up. Manager Rob Thomson told reporters (including Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer) that Realmuto will need “a couple of days” to rest up after fouling a ball off his knee in yesterday’s game, but the Phils don’t think Realmuto will need to visit the 10-day injured list. Garcia and Garrett Stubbs will therefore handle catching duties for what the team hopes is just a short time until Realmuto is feeling better.
This is the second time this season that Cuas has changed teams via the waiver wire, as the Blue Jays claimed him off the Cubs’ roster back in June. Cuas tossed three innings across four appearances for Toronto before the Jays DFA’ed him earlier this week, and the righty has a rough 7.71 ERA in 16 1/3 total innings this season with the Blue Jays and Cubs. It has been a big step down from the 3.84 ERA Cuas posted over 103 innings with the Royals and Cubs during the 2022-23 seasons, and even that respectable number was undermined by some shaky secondary metrics.
Control problems have contributed to Cuas’ struggles in both the majors and minors this year, as he has a 6.67 ERA across 27 combined Triple-A frames. Still missing a lot of bats despite those walks, the Phillies will take a look at Cuas and his plus sweeper, and Cuas will essentially replace Nelson as a depth arm.
Nelson was also designated for assignment last month before he cleared waivers and was outrighted to Lehigh Valley. This prior outright means that Nelson can now decline another outright assignment in favor of free agency, if he is perhaps looking for a fresh start after three seasons with the Phillies. He pitched 68 2/3 innings over 47 appearances with Philadelphia in 2022 but he has made just five MLB appearances since, totaling 10 2/3 frames at the big league level. A couple of injuries contributed to some of Nelson’s missed time on the Phils’ roster, but the club seemed to just view Nelson as a depth pitcher, first as a starter in 2023 and then back to relief work this season.
MLBTR Podcast: Matt Chapman’s Extension, Star Prospect Promotions, Bichette’s Future In Toronto
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, pinch-hitting host Mark Polishuk is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- Matt Chapman‘s contract extension with the Giants (1:17)
- Jasson Dominguez (finally) returns to the Yankees’ big league roster, and the Rangers are calling up Kumar Rocker (15:01)
- The many major decisions the Blue Jays are facing this offseason, and whether or not Bo Bichette is part of the team’s future (33:21)
Plus, we answer your questions, including…
- What the heck is up with the AL wild card? Is Minnesota going to be able to hold off the Tigers, or anyone else? K.C. made them look pedestrian and Detroit is, scarily enough, beginning to figure things out. (49:25)
Check out our past episodes!
- Royals’ Reinforcements, Promoted Angels, And The Terrible White Sox – listen here
- Scott Servais, Perry Minasian, The Orioles’ Rotation, And Joey Votto – listen here
- Who Could Get Waived, Potential Rule Changes, Austin Riley, And Hector Neris – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!